I'm an executive coach. Here are 5 ways I'm telling my clients to use AI to get ahead at work.

• Career coach Andrea Wasserman advises leaders to use AI to improve their competitive edge at work.
• She suggests enhancing your communication by simplifying complex ideas for varied audiences with an AI tool.
• Professionals can also better articulate their achievements, enhancing visibility in career settings.

I'm a career coach working with directors through C-level leaders in retail, tech, finance, real estate, and other industries. When my clients ask me how they should use AI at work, their real question is, "How do I stay competitive as expectations change and my colleagues leverage new tools?"

Some people use AI to get through their to-do lists faster, while others use it to enhance their thinking, fine-tune how they communicate, and make their value easier to recognize. The tool may be the same, but the outcomes can be very different.

Here are five ways you can use AI to accelerate your career in practice.

1. Pressure-test your thinking before you share it with anyone

Too many people walk into meetings while they're still forming their point of view or thinking about how they'll respond to questions. As they talk, you can hear that the idea is there, but it isn't fully developed.

To maintain and build their credibility, I have clients use an AI tool before they begin circulating their ideas out loud. I like ChatGPT, but it's worth trying Claude and Perplexity, too.

This isn't about being fed the answers, but about challenging yourself to be better prepared. Input your idea into an AI tool and ask:

• Where are the weak spots?
• What assumptions need more evidence to support them?
• How would skeptical executives who represent different areas of the organization respond?

By the time my clients who do this are in the rooms that matter, they're not trying to answer these questions in real time because they've already worked through obvious points of potential pushback.

2. Use AI to simplify your message

Some of the best operators I see often struggle here. They know their subject matter so well that when they communicate it to relative novices, they make the message too dense.

AI is useful for helping craft translations for different audiences. For example, I'll suggest clients take something complex — a process flow, a strategic recommendation, a dataset — and ask for different versions of it. How would you explain this to a CFO? To a sales rep? To a board member? To someone outside my functional area?

They're not copying the output. They're looking to get the structure and level of detail right and then refining it so it makes sense and sounds like them — just clearer and more concise.

Over time, the tool trains them to stop over-explaining and start making their point succinctly. This is critical, as brevity signals confidence.

3. Improve how you talk about your work

Even among strong performers, one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is assuming their results are obvious. Too often, they're not — either because others aren't paying attention, the details are confusing, or the impact isn't understood.

I'll have clients input a recent project or decision and ask AI to draft a narrative that spans the problem(s) they were solving, the trade-offs they weighed, and what changed because of their leadership or involvement.

The first version is usually generic, but it gives us something to refine until the story is clear and appropriately impressive (not exaggerated).

Then, this becomes language they can use in performance conversations, leadership updates, and business reviews. They can even use it to draft initial public-facing content for platforms like LinkedIn.

4. Show your thinking without creating extra work for yourself

Most people know they should be sharing more with their network, but their intent to be proactive gets buried by day-to-day needs.

Too often, being strategic feels optional until people realize they're being overlooked for opportunities that require it. With AI, they can reduce the effort that's required to share more.

I suggest clients capture rough thoughts as they come to mind. This might include notes after a meeting, a reaction to something in their industry, or a pattern they're noticing.

AI can polish a stream of consciousness or aggregate several streams to shape original thoughts into something they can actually share in person with a manager or on a platform like LinkedIn.

They're building visibility in regular bursts rather than waiting until they have all the time they would like to sit down and focus on long-form writing and editing.

5. Reclaim your time and apply it in higher-leverage ways

Basic uses of AI can still make a difference, such as writing first drafts, summarizing inputs, and organizing unstructured information. This creates time savings, but what's more important is what you do with that time.

When I see clients spending too much energy on execution and not enough on the work that actually drives their career — building relationships, influencing decisions, gaining visibility — I suggest they use AI to rebalance that. Having AI compare their calendar and inbox against their goals can help.

The clients gaining career traction from AI aren't only using it to produce more output; they're using it earlier in the process. Before a meeting, they've already worked through the weak spots in their thinking. Before sharing an idea, they've already figured out how to explain it clearly to their audience. As they head into a performance conversation, they've already developed language that shows the impact of their work.

They've already thought it through, figured out how to explain it, and decided how to position it.